The Secret to Healing Sindragosa as a Paladin

I wasn’t going to write this post. When I got back from vacation and thought about post writing and stuff, I told myself, naaaah, no one wants to read about Sindragosa anymore. At least not normal mode Sindragosa, not with all those shiny hard mode guides everwhere. But after talking with other paladins, I discovered that some are still deprived from the Secret. The Secret to healing Sindragosa as a paladin.

Ok, so you know phase 3? The one where the tanks play hot potato with the boss? And you’re TRYING to keep your beacon on the right tank while not dying and not getting too many stacks of everything? Yeah, that phase.

The closest thing I had to a Sindragosa screenshot

Oh, but before I reveal the Secret, here are some other tricks to healing Sindragosa:

1- If you have trouble running from Blistering Cold, you might be standing too far away. You don’t want to be in melee range (you’ll get mana back as you melee but you’ll also take Chilled to the Bone damage), yet you don’t want to be at max range either. The further you are, the more time you waste getting pulled in.

2- When I’m affected by Unchained Magic, I rack up 5 stacks of Instability by casting Holy Light, then count down from 5 before starting over. Everyone has their own strategy, but that’s the one that works for me. 5 stacks means I get decent healing out before having to pause, but there’s still some leeway in case I need to make an emergency cast.

3- On the last phase, when she’s throwing Frost Beacons around and getting poor, good-willing, innocent holy paladins caught in misplaced Frost Tombs, you can get out of the way by getting slightly closer to her. Don’t melee her (you don’t want to be Chilled to the Bone), but snuggling up will keep you out of the path of wayward Frost Beacons who can’t run fast enough dropping their tombs on your face.

As for the Secret…

On the last phase, as the tanks take turns holding Sindy’s interest, as everyone is out of line of sight all the time and as you take tons, oh tons of damage…beacon yourself. Just beacon yourself. Direct heal whichever tank is currently hanging on to the boss and bask in the redirected heals.

(Edit:Only do this on the last phase, when the constant switching of beacon targets becomes a waste of GCDs and mana. For the rest of the fight, just beacon whoever is tanking the boss.)

Suddenly your life becomes so much easier. The constant influx of heals on yourself means you don’t have to drop your stacks as often, you don’t have to blame the raid healers for not healing you, you can just focus on what you do best: delivering ginormous, blissful, toe-curling tank heals.

And, that, friends, is the secret to getting those scary, epic Sindragosa kills that end with only you and the tanks alive, and the rest of the raid groveling in admiration at your feet.

Sindragosa took us forever to learn too. The two hardest things for us were surviving blistering cold (no matter what, you’ll end up with 2 people with too slow reaction time and about 3 who get lag spikes whenever they get pulled in) and understanding Frost Tomb placement on phase 3.

Hopefully you’ll get the experience of being alone alive with the tanks during a Sindy kill at least once in your WoW career. It’s a very…satisfying…feeling.

Have a lock putting Curse of Tongues on her, slows the casting speed of Blisting Cold by 1.5 secs (for a grand total of 6.5 secs cast) even keyboard turners and backpedalers can get away from it!
As for the people speaking of Beacon, yes it doesnt work when there is not a LoS between the Beacon and the receiver of the heal (tested). I usually beacon myself and can heal the tank WHILE LoS Sind (the important part here to avoid increasing stacks of Mystic Buffet), just stand a few steps behind the IceBlock on a diagonal between you and her body (but a staight line to the tank).
Once the iceblock is down you can stand still in that spot while the raid moves cause the beacon would let you get 8+ stacks w/o sweating; after that if you need to reposition call it out (as well when you have Unchained Magic). Good luck

Hmm! I’m in a similar situation as the above commentor (reg mode, no kill yet) and Holy is my off-spec, so tips are good. My guild had our first go at this a couple days ago and yeah, p3 was definitely nuts. I’m going to try these suggestions on our next attempts.

This fight is pretty much easy till you got into that one last phase when everything you worked on, for so long (first phase) just go to hell 😛

Tho I find it easier just to beacon one tank that is currently tanking, and spam holylight on self, while standing on range dps (Glyph FTW). You dont have to care about LOS since beacon works as long as you stay in range, so you can freely move with your dps.

Also we find it much easier with one tank having frost gear and the other one just stand in for those 5-10 sec needed to drop MT stacks. Since he got the gear he can have much more stacks on.

Beacon is actually affected by LOS, but how exactly I’m not too sure. It seems like sometime you need to be in LOS of the beacon target and other times you don’t. I haven’t really gotten around to testing it in depths.

Our tanks use frost resistance gear too, but I’m not sure if we use the same strategy as you guys or if they both wear frost resistance gear. On 10 man, we just use one tank and it’s a lot simpler.

I’ve heard that theory before and that’s how it seems to work for me, but others who’ve tested it say it doesn’t work like that for them. One of these days I’ll have to grab some guinea pigs and play with beacon some.

I had terrible problems avoiding Blistering Cold until I stood with the melee. I get a few swings in with my mace before I turn to face the stairs, and start running as soon as she says “Can you feel…” (or whatever it is she says, been a few weeks).

If that’s not enough, Hand of Freedom works, although it’s castable on others so it’s neat to help out a fellow raider if they’re having trouble, too. 😀

I’m currently having mad healer guilt for not being able to get past that fight, since everyone pretty much says it’s a snoozefest at this point. But if I ever get a chance at Sindy, I’ll remember this advice. 😉

There are a lot of possible ways to do it, i suppose my favorite would be …

ICC10

Paladin with Benediction?
“/focus” on the boss, use “/cast [target=focustarget] Beacon of Light” to change the beacon to the tank. Always stay behind the iceblock and heal yourself (Splatter on the group + 5.25% extra from Divinity), Beacon heals without LOS. If a tank is switching while frostbreath (look for the timer when they call a switch, their fault but might still happen) do not switch the beacon, get los for the new tank and heal the tank without the beacon until the breath is over.

Paladin without Benediction or mana issues?
Paladins who have mana issues without intending it do something wrong but that’s a different topic. But anyway.
“focus” on the boss, use “/cast [target=focustarget] Beacon of Light” to place a beacon on the tank when you have to reset your stacks.

Beacon cost 35% (without Benediction), Holy Light 29% (without considering regeneration through crit). It is not too far away from saying 1 HL = 1 Beacon, essential the loss of a global cooldown is the bigger deal. If the tanks struggle rather get away from the iceblock and chaincast some Holy Light directly until things are under control. The advantage is that you are low enough on stacks to do that if you continuously reset.

The “real” “secret trick” is that you use the splatter for yourself and support the group heal that way. They can return the favor by giving some more attention on the tanks in case you are moving.

ICC25

Bring 2 or more paladins. 3 make it easier.

Each tank (2 or 3, take one more healer if you take only two tanks) gets a dedicated paladin who puts a beacon. The paladin goes behind the iceblock when “his tank” is on the boss and heals through the iceblock. Then they switch. If the group heal drops too low use the strategy use icc10 v1, if mana goes low call for mana.

disclaimer:
there are quite some aspects that are not covered considering the complexity encounter and even more important …

I really like how you think, you should get into writing more paladin healing strats, especially for hard mode fights (since between you and me, with a 25% buff, high level gear and an experienced group, most normal difficulty fights, including Sindragosa, can be healed while painting ones nails).

I haven’t experimented with beacon and LOS in a long time and I’m seeing that I really need to because my memories of it seem to be very inaccurate. With no LOS issues at all, that must be crazy OP in the arenas (which goes to show you how up and current I am on pvp and arena news!)

On 10 man, we just use one tank and burn the boss down as fast as possible, so it is easy to just keep a beacon on the tank. I still find it simpler to just beacon myself, though, since it leaves less room for error. The exception would be when we’re 2 healing the fight, in that case, a beaconned tank is a necessity since I have to help cover the raid damage.

Your 25 man strategy was how we used to do it at first (on the days where we were fortunate enough to have 2 paladins…not all guilds have that luxury!), but the coordination required for that was far more trouble than it was worth. There was always someone who didn’t pay attention, always a desobediant paladin, always a number of raid healers dying right at the beginning of the last phase. Then, as I tried to cover for everyone else, I’d forget to refresh my beacon on the tank and my tank would die…. Keeping beacon on myself just keeps the margin for error so much wider. I’d rather end the fight 2 manning it and killing the boss, then having to wipe the raid every time too many healers died.

You have to keep in mind that the majority of players don’t play with highly disciplined teams. There’s always human error floating around and a player who performs well in a non-cutting edge raid group is a player who can cover best for everyone’s (including their own) mistakes.

looked at my stategie papers and figured it out, beacon is of course affected by los, would we way to strong otherwise, but the los to the boss does not match the los to the tank, allowing you to heal the boss while still resetting.

the point why it works on icetombs was because the rather big diameter of the tomb and the fact that LOS is a single point in the middle of hitbox

Have a lock putting Curse of Tongues on her, slows the casting speed of Blisting Cold by 1.5 secs (for a grand total of 6.5 secs cast) even keyboard turners and backpedalers can get away from it!
As for the people speaking of Beacon, yes it doesnt work when there is not a LoS between the Beacon and the receiver of the heal (tested). I usually beacon myself and can heal the tank WHILE LoS Sind (the important part here to avoid increasing stacks of Mystic Buffet), just stand a few steps behind the IceBlock on a diagonal between you and her body (but a staight line to the tank).
Once the iceblock is down you can stand still in that spot while the raid moves cause the beacon would let you get 8+ stacks w/o sweating; after that if you need to reposition call it out (as well when you have Unchained Magic).